A&A 417, 487-498 (2004)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20034371
L. Christensen1 - S. F. Sánchez1 - K. Jahnke1 - T. Becker1 - L. Wisotzki1,2 - A. Kelz1 - L. C. Popovic1,3 - M. M. Roth1
1 - Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16,
14482 Potsdam, Germany
2 - Potsdam University, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam, Germany
3 - Astronomical Observatory, Volgina 7, 11160 Belgrade 74, Serbia
Received 22 September 2003 / Accepted 15 December 2003
Abstract
This paper presents observations of an extended Lyman-
emission nebula surrounding the galaxy responsible for the Damped
Lyman-
Absorption (DLA) line in the spectrum of the quasar
Q2233+131. With the Potsdam Multi Aperture Spectrophotometer (PMAS)
we measure the properties of the extended Ly
emission in an area of
having a total line flux of
(2.8
0.3)
10-16 erg cm-2 s-1, which at redshift z=3.15 corresponds to a
luminosity of (
erg s-1 and a size of
23
38 kpc. The location of the emission is spatially coincident with
the previously detected DLA galaxy, but extends significantly beyond its
limb. We argue that the Ly
emission is likely to be caused by an outflow
from the DLA galaxy, presumably powered by star formation. In the case of
negligible dust extinction, the Ly
luminosity indicates a star-formation
rate of 19
yr-1 consistent with that derived from
the UV continuum flux from the parent galaxy. The wind velocity indicated by
the integral field spectra is of the order of several hundred km s-1.
We find no indication of emission originating in a rotating disk.
Key words: galaxies: high redshift - galaxies: quasars: absorption lines - galaxies: kinematics and dynamics - galaxies: quasars: individual: Q2233+131
High redshift quasars (QSOs) show multiple absorption lines bluewards of the
redshifted 1216 Å Lyman
(Ly
)
wavelength. Known as the
Lyman
forest, this is caused by absorption in neutral hydrogen clouds
along the line of sight towards the QSO. Clouds having column densities larger
than 2
1020 cm-2 give rise to line profiles with broad wings
characteristic of damped Ly
lines. To date approximately 150 Damped Ly
Absorbers (DLAs) with redshifts of 0.1<z<4.6 have been confirmed
(Curran et al. 2002). It has been found that DLAs contain a significant fraction
of total gas mass compared to the mass of the stars in present day galaxies
(Storrie-Lombardi & Wolfe 2000; Wolfe et al. 1995; Storrie-Lombardi et al. 1996), and it is questioned whether there is a
significant evolution with redshift (Rao & Turnshek 2000). Spectroscopic observations
have shown that the DLAs have metallicities of 0.01-1 times solar with a mild
increase with decreasing redshift (Prochaska et al. 2003), suggesting that DLAs
are star-forming objects. Nevertheless, the relation between DLAs and galaxies
is not well understood. At higher redshifts, the DLA galaxies have been
suggested to be thick disks or the progenitors of present day spirals galaxies
(Wolfe et al. 1986), while others suggest that the counterparts could be dwarfs
(Hunstead et al. 1990), or galaxy building blocks in a hierarchical merging
scenario (Haehnelt et al. 1998).
Many investigations have been performed in order to establish what the galaxy
counterparts to the DLAs resemble most
(e.g. Colbert & Malkan 2002; Warren et al. 2001; Le Brun et al. 1997). Typically, deep broad-band or
narrow-band imaging of the fields containing the DLAs has been carried out,
and objects near the line of sight of the QSOs are detected after subtraction
of the QSO point spread function. These candidate DLA galaxies are typically
faint. Successive follow-up spectroscopy of the candidates is required to
reveal whether or not they have the same redshift as the DLA line. Only in 4 cases DLA galaxies have been confirmed this way for the high redshift
(
)
DLA galaxies (Djorgovski et al. 1996; Møller & Warren 1993; Fynbo et al. 1999; Møller et al. 2002).
In two additional cases Ly
emission lines have been detected in the troughs
of the DLA lines in the QSO spectra (Ellison et al. 2002; Leibundgut & Robertson 1999).
We here present a study of the Q2233+131 at z=3.295, which has a DLA line at
z=3.153 (Sargent et al. 1989). The metallicity of the DLA is [Fe/H] = -1.4
(Lu et al. 1997), and the column density of H I is below the classical limit of a
DLA line, having
cm-2, thus formally
characterizing this as a Lyman-Limit system. In accordance with previous
papers on this object we will continue to denote it a DLA absorber. A
candidate galaxy responsible for the absorption was found at an impact
parameter of 2
3 using the Lyman break technique, suggesting a redshift
larger than 3 (Steidel et al. 1995). This object was confirmed as the absorbing
galaxy having the same redshift as the DLA line (Djorgovski et al. 1996, hereafter
D96). These authors measured a Ly
line flux of
(6.4
1.2)
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 in a Keck long-slit spectrum and found the
magnitudes of the Lyman break galaxy of R=24.8
0.1 and V=25.1
0.2.
Warren et al. (2001) found H=25.34
0.17 for the galaxy using near-IR
photometry with the HST/NICMOS, and Møller et al. (2002) found
V50=25.75
0.12 with STIS images.
With integral field spectroscopy the conventional two step approach for
confirming a DLA galaxy can be avoided. A previous attempt to use this
technique only yielded an upper limit for the line emission from the DLA
galaxy in BR 1202-0725 (Petitjean et al. 1996), while the spectral
range of the observations of the DLA system in APM 08279+5255 did
not cover the appropriate wavelengths for the redshifted Ly
emission
(Ledoux et al. 1998). We show here that with the Potsdam Multi Aperture
Spectrophotometer (PMAS) instrument we not only detect Ly
emission from
the DLA galaxy at z=3.15, but we find that the object causing the Ly
emission is extended, and the line flux is larger than reported previously
in the literature.
In Sect. 2 of this paper we will describe the spectroscopic
observations, and the procedures for reducing the data. We analyse the spectra
of the QSO and the extended emission from the DLA in Sects. 3 and 4, respectively, addressing the nature of the extended emission.
The relation between the Ly
emission and the location of the DLA galaxy
seen in high spatial resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images is
described in Sect. 5. Similarities with other Ly
emitting objects
are described in Sect. 6, which leads to possible interpretations for
the origin of the extended Ly
nebula in Sect. 7. The ionised
gas mass in the nebula is estimated in Sect. 8. In Sect. 9
we present our conclusions.
Throughout the paper we assume a flat Universe with H0=70 km s-1 Mpc-1,
,
and
.
The redshift z=3.15then corresponds to a luminosity distance of 8.3
1028 cm (27.0 Gpc),
1
corresponds to a linear size of 7.6 kpc, and the look-back time is 11.5 Gyr.
The PMAS integral field instrument uses two cameras: a cryogenic acquisition
and guiding camera (A&G camera) that can be used for imaging in addition to
the integral field spectrograph (IFS) (Roth et al. 2000). The A&G camera has a
SITe TK1024 chip with 1k
1k pixels with a scale of 0
2 per pixel
giving a field of view of 3
4
3
4. The PMAS spectrograph is
equipped with 256 fibers coupled to a 16
16 lens array, that we used
with a spatial sampling of 0
5
0
5 per fiber on the sky,
resulting in a field of view of 8
8
.
The spectrograph
camera has a SITe ST002A 2k
4k CCD and its 256 spectra have a FWHM of
2 pixels when using a 2
2 binned read-out mode. The spectra are
aligned on the CCD with 7 pixels between adjacent spectra making
cross-contamination negligible.
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Figure 1:
Left hand panel: image of Q2233+131 in the wavelength range
5200-5300 Å. This image shows the 16 |
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Figure 2:
Spectrum of Q2233+131. All spaxels within a radial
aperture of 2
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PMAS is mounted on the 3.5 m telescope at Calar Alto. We observed Q2233+131 on
Sep. 2, 2002 for a total of 7200 s (4
1800 s) at an airmass between 1.094
and 1.15 and a seeing between 1
0 and 1
3 measured by the A&G
camera. Using a 300 gr/mm grating yielded a spectral resolution of 6 Å
while the grating was set to cover the wavelength range of 3930-7250 Å.
Calibration images were obtained following the science exposures and consisted
of spectra of emission line lamps (HgNe), and spectra of a continuum lamp
needed to locate the 256 individual spectra on the CCD. Observations of the
spectrophotometric standard stars BD +28
4211 and Hz4 were
obtained during the night for flux calibration.
Reduction of the data was done in IDL with P3D_online, a software package
written specifically for reducing PMAS data (Becker 2002). After bias
subtraction the 256 spectra were extracted from the two-dimensional frames.
Wavelength calibration was performed using the emission line lamp spectra.
For the flat fielding the average transmission of each fiber was determined
using exposures of the sky at twilight. Cosmic ray hits were removed from each
of the 4 files using the LA Cosmic routine within IRAF (van Dokkum 2001), and
the rejected pixels were inspected by eye checking that no pixels close to the
Ly
emission line were affected. The data cubes were corrected for the
effect of differential atmospheric refraction using the formula of
Filippenko (1982). Given the small airmass of Q2233+131 during the
observation the effect is small, but not negligible at long wavelength
intervals. At the wavelength of the DLA line the effect can be ignored, since
this was the reference wavelength for estimating the relative offsets before
combining the 4 frames. This method ensures that the position of the DLA galaxy relative to the centroid of the QSO at other wavelengths is not
shifted. In the end the four files were co-added, resulting in a data cube of
dimensions 16
16
1024 pixels.
For subtraction of the sky background, an average background spectrum was
created by co-adding several spectra at the edge of the field of view,
uncontaminated by the QSO flux, and subtracted from all 256 individual
spectra. All further data calibration was done using IRAF. For the standard
star observations we coadded all spectra within a radial aperture of 3
,
and compared the one-dimensional standard star spectrum with table values to
create a sensitivity function taking into account the atmospheric extinction
typical for Calar Alto (Hopp & Fernandez 2002). Finally, the spectra were flux
calibrated using this sensitivity function.
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Figure 3:
Spectrum of the extended emission associated with the DLA galaxy at z=3.15 in Q2233+131. The spectrum has been obtained by co-adding |
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Further analysis and inspection of the data was performed with the "Euro3D Visualization Tool'', which is a very efficient tool made for visualizing integral field data (Sánchez 2003).
We constructed narrow band images by selecting appropriate wavelength
intervals in the combined 3D data cube, resulting in images with 16
16 spatial pixels ("spaxels''). In Fig. 1 such an image of Q2233+131
is shown in the wavelength range 5200-5300 Å. For creating a
one-dimensional object spectrum one can select spaxels in this image, each of
which represents a single spectrum, and co-add the selected spectra.
For comparison with later spectra we created a combined spectrum of Q2233+131
by co-adding all spectra within a radial aperture of 2
(
45 spaxels) in Fig. 1. An overall aperture correction of 2% was
applied, and the resulting spectrum is shown in Fig. 2.
We detect many absorption features from metal lines in the spectrum of the QSO
associated with the z=3.15 DLA system, some of which were already recognized
in D96. The redshifts of these lines, listed in Table 1, matches
the redshift of the DLA line. We derive a mean systemic redshift
z=3.1475
0.0005 from the all metal lines in the DLA apart from the
Si IV
and
O IV 1400 Å
blend which has a larger offset than
the low ionization species. A detailed analysis of the metallicity and column
densities is outside the scope of this paper, as higher spectral resolution
would be necessary for this purpose. For the same reason the Ly
absorption line is blended with the Lyman
forest. The dip seen in the tip on the Ly
emission from the QSO is probably caused by Si II 1260 Å at the redshift of the DLA system.
In addition to the absorption lines we find broad emission lines from Ly
,
N V 1240, Si IV + O IV 1400 Å and C IV 1549 Å from the QSO. Including these four lines we find the redshift
z=3.2877
0.0052 for the QSO.
Table 1:
List of emission lines from the Q2233+131 itself and the
absorption lines, related to the z = 3.15 DLA system detected in the
QSO spectrum. A standard air-to-vacuum correction has been applied to
the observed lines before deriving the redshifts. The uncertainties of
the measured redshifts are typically
0.0005.
In Fig. 1 we show another narrow-band image, this time selected
from the wavelength interval 5040-5055 Å, corresponding to the absorption
trough in the QSO spectrum. An extended object is visible to the south and
south-west of the location of the QSO. The size of this object is roughly
5
,
however, some of the extended object emission is due
to the presence of emission in the red wing of the DLA line from the QSO. We
note that the very high signal which appears at the left edge of the
field with coordinates (3.5, 1) is due to a bad flat-field effect of one
single fiber, which has a lower overall transmission.
We have added 35 spaxels which are apparently associated with the emission
line object. A part of the spectrum around the emission line is shown in the
upper panel in Fig. 3 where one clearly sees an emission line
at
5050 Å. This wavelength corresponds to Ly
at the redshift of
the DLA line at z=3.1538
0.0005, in agreement within 1
with the
redshift published in D96. A second line is present at
5200 Å which
is caused by the Ly
emission from the QSO at a distance of 2
.
For
comparison the same section of the QSO spectrum is shown in the middle panel
in Fig. 3. There appears to be another broad absorption line
at 5000 Å, but a high resolution spectrum of the QSO has shown that this
feature is caused by a blend of 5-6 individual absorption lines
(Bechtold 1994). The lower panel shows the spectrum of the DLA where a
scaled spectrum of the QSO has been subtracted. In fact, the Ly
emission
line at 5050 Å is effected very little by this subtraction.
The spectra were analysed with the ONEDSPEC package in IRAF. We measured a
full width half maximum (FWHM) of the Ly
emission line of 20
2 Å.
The resolution in the combined spectra is 7.9 Å, measured from the FWHM of
the 5577 Å night sky line in the combined spectra. This yields an internal
FWHM of 18.4
3.3 Å of the Ly
line, corresponding to a restframe
velocity of 1090
190 km s-1. We see no emission line from
N V
1240 or C IV
1549 from the DLA galaxy
down to a 3
detection limit of 1
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 in agreement
with D96, albeit their detection limit was 10 times fainter.
The redshift difference between the DLA galaxy's Ly
emission component and
the DLA absorption components in the QSO spectrum is
0.0007 corresponding to a velocity of 450
50 km s-1.
This is larger than the 209 km s-1 reported in D96. Here we have used
information from all the detected absorption lines in calculating the systemic
redshift of the DLA. If we instead used the redshift reported in D96 for the
absorption minimum of the DLA line itself, we would find a velocity difference
of 270
40 km s-1, which is within 2
of their value. Since the
interstellar absorption lines have been shown to be blue-shifted by
>100 km s-1 with respect to the stars in Lyman Break Galaxies
(Shapley et al. 2003), the latter value (
300 km s-1) is probably a
better estimate.
The line flux measured by fitting the observed line with a Gaussian profile is
(2.4
0.3)
10-16 erg cm-2 s-1; a simple summation of the flux values for
each pixel from the emission line gives the same result within the errors.
From the dust maps of Schlegel et al. (1998) a Galactic reddening of
in the direction towards Q2233+131 is found. Correcting for this effect
increases the line flux to (2.8
0.3)
10-16 erg cm-2 s-1 and the total
luminosity of the source is
2.4-0.2+0.3
1043 erg s-1 in
the adopted cosmology. With the noise in each spectral element around
5000 Å of 3.2
10-18 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1 and the line flux being measured over
20 pixels, the significance of the detection of the Ly
line is 15
.
The size of the object is 23
38 kpc above a 3
detection
threshold of 1
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1.
A measurement of the equivalent width (EW) of the emission line is hampered by
the fact that the continuum emission is extremely faint. From the observed
ground-based V and R band magnitudes in D96 together with magnitudes from
HST images (derived in Sect. 5), we estimate the flux from the
underlying continuum at
5050 Å to be
(1.1
0.4)
10-19 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1 assuming a power-law spectral energy
distribution,
in the continuum. With this line
and continuum flux we derive the rest frame EW
=190-70+150 Å. The
large error is mainly caused by the uncertainty for the continuum flux.
Furthermore, the measured EW must be taken as a lower limit because the effect
of dust extinction affects the Ly
flux more than the UV continuum emission.
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Figure 4:
The images show the lowest (5 |
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With integral field spectra one can in principle determine the velocity
structure of the Ly
nebula. Specifically, it would be interesting to search
for signs of rotation. A detailed analysis of the velocity structure is not
possible with the present dataset, since in several of the individual spectra
the emission line is only detected on a
2
level, which makes any
analysis of any velocity structure unreliable. Instead we summed up the
15 spectra in the left-most (eastern) part and the
15 in the
right-most (western) part, respectively. A sketch of the division is shown in
Fig. 4. The Ly
emission for each region is still detectable,
and the line flux of each is
1
10-16 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1. We fitted
Gaussians to the emission line in these two regions, and find that the peak of
the emission is shifted by +2.5 Å from the east to the west part, which
corresponds to a rest-frame velocity difference of
150 km s-1.
This is small compared to the rotational velocity of present day large spiral
galaxies. Repeating this exercise by splitting the extended object into a
southern and a northern part as shown in Fig. 4, the emission
line is shifted by 5 Å corresponding to a difference of
300 km s-1, where the northern part has the largest redshift. This
velocity is comparable to that expected for spiral galaxies, but the geometry
is unusual for a disk, and as shown in Sect. 4.2 the apparent shift
of the emission line can be caused by a combination of more than one emission
region. In Table 2 we summarize the properties for the different
parts of the extended Ly
nebula, and in Fig. 5 we show the
Ly
line for the different regions. The 1
errors for the
centroids of the Gaussian profiles are 0.5 Å estimated from simulations of
artificial spectra having faint emission lines at known wavelengths. From
these simulated spectra we also estimate that the 1
error for the
EWs is
2 Å. All regions are seen to have a large FWHM indicating
velocities of 700-1100 km s-1, i.e. they are well resolved by our spectra.
Table 2:
Properties of the Ly
emission from different parts of the extended
nebula derived from fitting a single Gaussian profile to the observed
spectrum. The 1
errors of the estimations of the Gaussian centroids
are 0.5 Å. Note that there is an overlap of the selected spectra
belonging to the various regions such that some spectra belonging to
the east part
also belong to the north (see Fig. 4). The EW is not
meaningful to calculate for the different regions, as the continuum
emission is restricted to the total emission. Line fluxes listed in
Col. 3 have not been corrected for Galactic extinction.
Previously, the existence of a disk in this system has been suggested from
studies of the metal absorption line profiles (Lu et al. 1997). This
interpretation is not supported by Ledoux et al. (1998), who concluded that the
profiles could be caused by several interacting components, an interpretation
which is motivated by cold dark matter simulations of hierarchical clustering
of proto-galaxies (Haehnelt et al. 1998). Under the assumption of a rotating disk,
the enclosed mass calculated from
is
.
As will be discussed below, the Ly
emission is
unlikely to originate in a rotating disk, and the mass calculated here is
probably overestimated.
In Fig. 2 the Ly
emission line appears to have a double peaked
profile. As this feature is not apparent in D96, we double checked carefully
for its integrity. Although the dip near the line centre is of the order of
the noise level, it appears in all spectra and therefore is almost certainly
real. In Fig. 5 all the four separate spectra described above
have the same double peaked profile. The feature is not caused by the
subtraction of the sky background, nor is it due to imperfections in the CCD
in the region around the emission line.
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Figure 5:
Spectra of the four different regions of the emission line
object. The north, south, east, and west regions correspond to those
listed in Table 2. All regions are seen to have the same
double peaked profile of the Ly |
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The difference between our measured emission redshift and the one reported in
D96 may indicate that our wavelength calibration has an error of
1 Å. This would not have an effect on the reported velocity difference since the error would be systematic in all our spectra and not affect the differences in the estimated Gaussian maxima. Furthermore, as mentioned, the
spectra are contaminated by the QSO, but a subtraction of a scaled QSO spectrum from the four individual spectra does not change the Ly
line profile.
We caution the reader that other features appear to be systematic in
the spectra, e.g. a slightly smaller systematic depression is present in all
the spectra around 5020 Å that could be due to an error in the background
estimation. Keeping this in mind, we note that a similar double peaked feature
was observed for the Ly
line of the DLA galaxy in Q2059-360.
However, for this object the line profile changed with slit position
(Leibundgut & Robertson 1999).
The values for the centroids of the Gaussian fits listed in
Table 2 can thus be affected by unequal contributions from two
separate emission components. We re-analysed the profiles by simultaneously
fitting two Gaussians resulting in centroids of the two peaks listed in Cols. 1 and 2 in Table 3. For these two-Gaussian fits the widths of
the two individual components are barely resolved with this spectral
resolution. The location of the first peak is shifted by 1.1 Å from east
to west, corresponding to 65 km s-1, while the second component is shifted
by -1 Å. Since the uncertainties for the estimate of the Gaussian
centroids are 0.5 Å, the shifts are consistent with 0 within 1
errors. The shifts for the north-south regions are likewise small
(<2.5 Å corresponding to <150 km s-1). For all regions the
splitting between the two Gaussians are 10-12.5 Å corresponding to
velocities of 600-750 km s-1. Very likely, the velocity structure across
the extended Ly
nebula is complex, and single Gaussian fits for such
extended areas as analysed here is over-simplistic.
Additionally, we have fit the profiles by a combination of a single Gaussian
emission line and a Gaussian absorption line creating the dip seen in the
spectra. The centroids for the absorption line for these fits are listed in
Table 3 in Col. 3. The
s from these fits were
slightly smaller than for the two emission component fits, indicating that the
presence of an absorption line is preferred.
Table 3: The location of the two peaks from fitting simultaneously two Gaussians to the spectra in Fig. 5. The centroids for the fits between the 4 regions vary with <2.5 Å indicating small velocity differences. For all regions the splitting between the two Gaussians are 10-12 Å corresponding to velocities of 600-750 km s-1. The third column lists the centroid for the absorption line for the fits consisting of an emission line and an absorption line.
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Figure 6:
The left hand panel shows a section of the PMAS spectra consisting of
spectra from 100 fibers around the region of the DLA. The spectra are
oriented with a horizontal dispersion direction. Here are shown 6 groups of
spectra where the emission from the extended nebula is visible within the
small circles. Each group can be considered as representing a 0
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With integral field data we can reproduce the observations expected from slit
spectroscopy. In Fig. 6 we show a cut of the PMAS spectra around
the DLA line in the QSO, where we have indicated the emission from the
extended Ly
nebula by small circles. In comparison we have in the upper
right hand panel created an artificial long slit spectrum with a width of
1
,
and the corresponding one-dimensional spectrum is shown in the lower
panel. These plots can directly be compared to the ones presented in D96. We
derive a line flux of (6.5
1.0)
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1 for the Ly
line,
confirming the flux reported in D96, and a FWHM of 6.5
1.0 Å,
corrected for the instrumental resolution, corresponding to a velocity of
390
60 km s-1. This FWHM is similar to the the value in D96. With
these simple exercises we have shown that it is possible to reproduce the
previously published results derived from long-slit spectroscopy.
One sees furthermore in Fig. 6, that the Ly
emission indicated
by the small circles do not overlap spatially with the location of the QSO.
This implies that the contours in Fig. 1 at a distance less than
1
from the QSO only show emission from the QSO itself and not Ly
emission from the DLA galaxy. Therefore we consider that selecting the
emission region from the DLA galaxy as indicated in Fig. 4 is the
real extension of the Ly
nebula associated with the DLA galaxy.
For comparison of the extended emission with high spatial resolution and
deeper optical data previously unpublished HST/WFPC2 images of Q2233+131 were
retrieved from the HST archive. Previously, a high spatial resolution image
from HST/STIS was presented by Møller et al. (2002) and we also retrieved the STIS
images from the archive for comparison. The WFPC2 planetary camera images were
obtained through the F702W filter with a total integration time of 10 800 s and
the images were combined using the drizzle package in IRAF (Fruchter & Hook 2002).
The resulting pixel scale in the drizzled image is 0
023.
An 8
8
section of the WFPC2 image is shown in
Fig. 7. The DLA galaxy is visible towards the south and the
contours of the extended Ly
nebula detected by PMAS has been overplotted.
The exact positioning of the contours was checked from the knowledge of the
location of the QSO in the PMAS images from Fig. 1. The Ly
nebula is clearly extended, but it is difficult to measure the extension of it
in the direction towards the QSO since it is contaminated by the flux from the
red wing of the DLA line. Avoiding this contamination requires an exact
knowledge of the point spread function behavior with wavelength such that the
flux contribution from the QSO can be subtracted. However as argued from
Fig. 6, there is no spatial overlap between the QSO and the Ly
nebula so the contours to the north is caused by QSO emission only. In the
other direction towards the south there is a clear cutoff in the contours. We
therefore conclude that the Ly
nebula is more elongated in the east-west
direction than in the north-south direction yielding the extension of the
Ly
nebula of 3
5
.
Considering that the observed
extension of the nebula is a convolution of the true emission and the seeing
during the observations, it could originate in smaller clouds in a more
complex environment.
In the WFPC2 image a faint and small galaxy is visible at the position
indicated in D96 and Møller et al. (2002), and which is identical to the Lyman
Break Galaxy (LBG) detected by Steidel et al. (1995). The impact parameter
measured in the image is 2
37 corresponding to 18 kpc in the adopted
cosmology, the position angle is 159.1
,
and the size of the galaxy along
the major axis is 0
5, which at z=3.15 corresponds to 3.8 kpc.
In Fig. 7, the size of the Ly
nebula appears much larger than
the size of the DLA galaxy in the WFPC2 image. To quantify this we
investigated whether some low surface brightness emission is lost in the WFPC2
image due to different sensitivities. In the WFPC2 image the 3
limiting magnitude is 26.8 mag arcsec-2, corresponding to a flux limit of
6
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 arcsec-2, while the PMAS observations of the Ly
object detect emission of 4
10-17 erg cm-2 s-1 arcsec-2, implying that
the detection limit of the PMAS spectra are roughly the same as for the WFPC2 images. Therefore, if the continuum emission were as extended as the Ly
line emission it would have been detected in the HST images.
The optical magnitude of the LBG corresponds to an L* galaxy (D96). In
Fig. 7 the DLA galaxy is seen to be composed of two components
separated by 0
25 corresponding to
2 kpc at the redshift of the DLA galaxy, and the two components are aligned almost orthogonal to the long axis
of the extended emission. A galactic outflow will naturally occur along the
minor axis of the galaxy as described in Heckman et al. (1990), which would
explain the orientation of the elongated Ly
nebula with respect to the LBG orientation. The irregular morphology of the galaxy was also found by
Møller et al. (2002) in their HST/STIS data. They noted that the morphology of the
DLA galaxy was not unusual compared to field galaxies at the same redshift.
Using aperture photometry in IRAF we find the magnitude of the DLA galaxy
mF702W = 24.80
0.1 using the planetary camera zero point from
the WFPC2 Instrument Handbook. This corresponds to a continuum flux of
3
10-19 erg cm-2 s-1 Å-1 at
Å in the restframe of the
DLA galaxy. This is below our detection limit in the PMAS spectra and explains
the non-detection of underlying continuum emission from the DLA galaxy. Dust
obscuration would make the intrinsic luminosity only larger. The derived flux
from the WFPC2 image, confirming that the UV continuum is consistent with
being flat, is in agreement with the hypothesis in D96 that the galaxy is very
young, and in a star-bursting phase. Using the same aperture for the STIS
data we derive
m(V50)=25.65
0.1 in agreement within 1
of the
value reported in Møller et al. (2002).
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Figure 7:
A negative 8
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| Open with DEXTER | |
We now compare the properties of other DLA galaxies with those for the Q2233+131 DLA galaxy.
The EW of the observed Ly
line is relatively large compared to that of
other high redshift galaxies (Shapley et al. 2003). However, using a 1
long slit spectrum one would have obtained a 4 times smaller
flux, and therefore decreased the inferred EW by the same amount. Values of
Ly
EWs for high redshift Ly
emitters are >14 Å, while some may
have EWs which are two orders of magnitude larger (Kudritzki et al. 2000). For the
Ly
emission from the DLA galaxies in PKS 0528-250 and
Q2206-1958 the measured EWs are 63 Å and 83 Å, respectively,
which is typical for LBGs at the same redshifts (Møller et al. 2002).
We found that the line width for the Q2233+131 DLA galaxy suggest larger
velocities: 1000 km s-1 compared to
700 km s-1 observed for
other DLA galaxies. An explanation for this may be that we have co-added the
spectra over a large area. Velocity differences of 300 km s-1 have been
found from one end to the other of the extended emission, and with the
artificial slit spectra created from the integral field spectra we indeed find
a smaller value.
Leibundgut & Robertson (1999) found evidence for an extended Ly
emission nebula
associated with the DLA in Q2059-360 using long-slit spectroscopy,
with the slit placed at several positions offset from the QSO. They found a
velocity difference between the Ly
emission line and the DLA absorption of
+490 km s-1, and that the Ly
emission line could be described by two
components separated by 5 Å. However, they could not exclude that the
Ly
emission was affected by the QSO, which has a very small redshift
difference from the Ly
emission line. Nevertheless, these observations are
remarkably similar to those presented here of the Q2233+131 DLA, except for
the fact that the QSO in our case is well separated in redshift space by
.
The properties derived for the Q2233+131 Ly
nebula are also similar to the
DLA galaxy detected in Q0151+048A which is described in
Fynbo et al. (1999) and Fynbo et al. (2000). They concluded that some of the extended
Ly
emission could be caused by photoionization by the QSO, which has the
same redshift as the DLA. This is not the case here. The proper distance
between the QSO and the DLA is 120 Mpc in the adopted cosmology. Using the
relation between the QSO absolute magnitude and the distance to the DLA given
in Warren & Møller (1996), we find that the ionizing flux can be at most
10-21 erg cm-2 s-1 arcsec-2, which is 4 orders of magnitude below the
observed value.
Warren & Møller (1996) found evidence that the DLA galaxy termed S1 in
Q0528-250 has an extension of 1
after correcting for
atmospheric seeing suggesting that Ly
emission is more extended than the
region emitting continuum radiation.
Previously a couple of LBGs at z=3.1 have been associated with surrounding
Ly
emission nebulae in Steidel et al. (2000), who termed these "Ly
blobs''.
The properties of the extended nebula presented here are less extreme, but not
very different from the Ly
blobs. The total luminosity of the Ly
emission from the DLA nebula is a factor 10 less than from the Ly
blobs, and
the line width of the DLA emission is a factor of 2 smaller (Ohyama et al. 2003).
The inferred size of the DLA emission is smaller than for the Ly
blobs,
which have sizes of
15
,
i.e. a factor of 3 larger than the DLA's
emission, but much of the emission is diffuse, and substructure in the blobs is
clearly visible.
It is likely that the observed extension of the DLA galaxy's Ly
emission
becomes larger as one goes to fainter fluxes, and since the surface brightness
decreases with redshift as (1+z)4, it is difficult to detect faint extended
objects especially with a 4 m class telescope.
We address now the question whether the Ly
emission is induced by a
superwind from the DLA galaxy and caused by star formation, or if it
originates in a rotating disk.
For the assumption of a rotating disk the relation
gives vc = (545
.
Such a large value makes the
interpretation of a rotating disk questionable. A more likely explanation is
resonance scattering of Ly
photons that can also produce a large FWHM of
the emission line. The resonant nature of the Ly
photon neither increases
nor decreases the total flux emitted by the source, only the escape direction,
but when the dust-to-gas ratio of the environment exceeds 10% of the Galactic
value, the extinction will be significant due to the increased escape path
from the resonance scattering of the Ly
photons. While in dust free
star-forming galaxies the expected Ly
EW is 100-200 Å
(Charlot & Fall 1993), the fact that the measured EW is similar to this value
suggests that the most probable source of ionization is massive star
formation, and that dust extinction plays a small role.
The red wing of the line profile observed by D96 is marginally detected in our lower resolution data. We can reproduce the line profile in the artificial slit spectrum in Fig. 6, but it is much weaker when co-adding several spaxels as in Fig. 2 indicating the presence of some velocity structure.
In star-forming galaxies, it is mainly the OB stars that produce Lyman
continuum photons. These photons will be absorbed by the surrounding neutral
hydrogen and re-emitted as line photons. Kennicutt (1998) gives the
relation between the H
luminosity (L) of a galaxy and its
star-formation rate (SFR). Assuming case B recombination (Osterbrock 1989)
and that the expected ratio of Ly
to H
flux is
,
implies that
Assuming that the Ly
emission is caused by star formation we find
SFR =19
yr-1, not corrected for the unknown
escape fraction. This is a typical value compared to the SFRs found for LBGs
having strong Ly
emission (Shapley et al. 2003). It is also consistent with
the observed continuum, as can be shown using the conversion from the
continuum flux at 1500 Å in the restframe of a galaxy and the SFR, for
which Madau et al. (1998) gives the relation
SFR(
(erg s-1 Hz-1). We take into account an uncertainty for the
conversion factor of
30%. The observed R band corresponds to
1500 Å in the rest frame of the DLA system. Correcting the R band
magnitude for Galactic extinction and applying an offset converting Vega
magnitudes to AB magnitudes (Fukugita et al. 1995) cancels each other out, i.e.
RAB=24.8
1. Using the relation above this magnitude corresponds to a
SFR =12
,
which is consistent with the SFR
derived from the Ly
flux.
Given the uncertainties regarding the conversions from fluxes to SFRs, we find
that the Ly
emission around the DLA galaxy could be caused by massive
stars. In principle a significant amount of dust would imply that the true
Ly
flux is higher than derived from the UV flux. On the other hand, the
consistency between the two measurements indicates that dust extinction plays
no major role in this particular case. A low dust content could imply a
larger escape fraction of the Ly
photons. Another explanation of the large
Ly
luminosity could be the complex dynamics involved in this system
(Dawson et al. 2002), and not directly related to the dust content as argued for
nearby galaxies (Kunth et al. 2003).
Several authors have analysed the transfer of Ly
photons in neutral clouds
(Urbaniak & Wolfe 1981; Zheng & Miralda-Escudé 2002; Adams 1972). Even in the case of a static cloud, the
emission profile of Ly
would have a double peak, whereas an outflow would
blend the two components of the line. The wavelength difference between the
two components is
,
where k is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature,
is the
Hydrogen mass, c is the speed of light, and
is the rest frame
wavelength of Ly
.
Assuming a temperature of 104 K, the corresponding
splitting of the line is 0.2 Å at z=3.15, which is much smaller than the
observed splitting. On the other hand, given the observed splitting, a
temperature of 3
107 K is required, which is two orders of magnitude
higher than temperatures in superwind outflows at distances far away from the
central starburst (Heckman et al. 1990). We therefore argue that the observed
double peak is not caused by a static neutral cloud, but has a more complex
origin.
In the case of an outflow, the double peaked emission line can be explained.
A galactic wind, powered by star formation and supernova explosions, expands
outwards and interacts with the surrounding material, shock heats and
accelerates this, producing emission line filaments. The preferred direction
of expansion is where the pressure gradient is largest, i.e. along the
rotation axis of the galaxy usually aligned with the minor axis. The wind
creates a large shell of swept up material, and observations towards such an
object would intersect the shell in the front and the rear end giving rise to
a double peaked emission line profile. Such double peaked profiles of optical
emission lines have been observed for nearby starburst galaxies which exhibit
these large scale outflows typically termed superwinds (Heckman et al. 1990).
Additionally, a double peaked Ly
emission line profile was found from the
starburst galaxy T1214-277 by Mas-Hesse et al. (2003), who concluded that
the feature is caused by emission in an outflow. The inferred velocity
separation between the two peaks from the DLA galaxy emission are similar to
the highest ones measured for the nearby galaxies in Heckman et al. (1990) and
similar to the Ly
emission line splitting from T1214-277
(Mas-Hesse et al. 2003).
In the case of a superwind outflow, the DLA cloud is affected by its impact,
or could event be created by a such. Taniguchi & Shioya (2001) found that a
superwind can create Lyman limit systems with
cm-2 along
filaments. Followed by gravitational collapse along such filaments DLA clouds
can be created. Several authors have pointed out that there could be a
relation between superwinds from galaxies and the metal absorption systems
seen in quasar spectra (e.g. Nulsen et al. 1998; Heckman et al. 1990), thus explaining the
early chemical enrichment of neutral gas clouds seen at the highest redshifts.
However, Bond et al. (2001) conclude the opposite, on the basis of Mg II absorption profiles, that superwinds are not causing the majority of DLA systems.
The velocity difference between the emitter and the absorber could be caused
by the impact of a superwind from the galaxy which would accelerate a
pre-existing low temperature clouds in the surrounding environment. Depending
on the initial distance from the starburst, column density of the neutral gas
cloud, and the luminosity of the starburst, it can be shown that the expected
acceleration is of the order of a few times 100 km s-1 (Heckman et al. 1990).
This would be consistent with the velocity difference of
300 km s-1between the Ly
emission and the DLA absorption measured here.
When the Ly
luminosity is known, the mass contained in the extended nebula
can be evaluated following the method described in Morse et al. (1998). The
luminosity is given by:
![]() |
(1) |
![]() |
(3) |
Due to the unknown dust content in the cloud the unextincted Ly
luminosity
could be much higher than derived, and consequently also the mass. On the
other hand, a smaller filling factor would decrease the derived mass, i.e.
these two unknown factors may even compensate each other to some extent.
Using integral field spectra obtained with PMAS, we have presented evidence
that the DLA galaxy previously known to be responsible for the DLA system in
Q2233+131 has an extended envelope of Ly
emission. From the spectra we
constructed an artificial narrow-band image which showed that the extension of
the emission is 3
5
corresponding to 23
38 kpc.
This cloud has a line flux of (2.8
0.3)
10-16 erg cm-2 s-1 corrected for
Galactic extinction, corresponding to a luminosity of
erg s-1 at z=3.1538. We derive the
rest frame EW
=190-70+150 Å.
The source of the ionization is likely star formation within the DLA galaxy.
The measurement of the Ly
luminosity is generally considered as a very
uncertain method for estimating the SFR given the unknown dust obscuration and
escape fractions. With this in mind we find a
SFR = 19
yr-1 from the Ly
luminosity, a
result which is consistent with the
SFR = 12
yr-1 derived from the UV continuum
flux from the observed ground based R band magnitude. The agreement between
the two suggests that dust extinction plays only a small role.
A velocity offset of
270
40 km s-1 between the emission and the
absorption component in the DLA galaxy does not support the hypothesis that
the absorbing cloud resides in a rotating disk. We investigated the velocity
structure of the extended Ly
emission further by constructing 4 composite
spectra. By fitting Gaussian profiles to spectra from the eastern and
western region we found an offset of 2.5 Å, which corresponds to a
velocity difference of 150 km s-1. The splitting of the spectra into a
northern and a southern region gave a velocity difference of 300 km s-1.
These results combined with the extended nature of the Ly
nebula is not
consistent with the properties of a disk similar to that in large spiral
galaxies.
The object's characteristics (luminosity, FWHM, and spatial extension) are
similar to that for some LBGs for which extended Ly
emission has been
detected. These high redshift Ly
emitters are thought to be created by an
outflowing wind. Recombination of ionised hydrogen creates Ly
photons that
are resonantly scattered in the environment, which results in the observed
extended envelope. We therefore consider the interpretation of an outflow
from the galaxy a more likely interpretation. Furthermore, a galactic outflow
can create emission lines with double peaked profiles in agreement with the observations.
We argued that the DLA cloud is not a part of a rotating disk surrounding the
DLA galaxy. The relation between the extended Ly
emission and the DLA cloud
in the line of sight towards the QSO is somewhat speculative. The wind
responsible for the extended emission can create neutral clouds with high
column densities located along filamentary structures. Gravitational collapse
in these filaments can create DLA clouds. Another explanation could be a
previously existing neutral gas cloud which has been accelerated by the
superwind giving rise to a velocity separation of 300 km s-1. A third
explanation is that the DLA cloud could be an otherwise unrelated infalling
cloud. This third explanation is questionable, given the fact that the
measured metallicity in the DLA cloud suggests some processing of stellar
material.
We have demonstrated the advantages of using integral field spectroscopy for investigating DLA systems in the terms of confirming the galaxies responsible for the DLA absorption. First of all, one can avoid the conventional two step procedure for detecting candidate DLA galaxies near the line of sight towards the QSOs, which later have to be followed up spectroscopically. With integral field spectra one can create artificial narrow-band images suited to any wavelengths required. Secondly, a non-extended line emitting region could be missed by placing the slit in a less favorable angle, while in the case of an extended emission the line fluxes would inevitably be underestimated.
We will undertake further investigation of the Q2233+131 DLA system with PMAS to investigate the velocity structure of the Ly
nebula.
Specifically, the system should be observed with a higher spectral resolution
which should allow us to determine the presence of P Cygni profiles expected for
the case of superwind outflows but also to investigate the double peaked profile in detail.
Acknowledgements
L. Christensen acknowledges support by the German Verbundforschung associated with the ULTROS project, grant No. 05AE2BAA/4. S.F. Sánchez acknowledges the support from the Euro3D Research Training Network, grant No. HPRN-CT2002-00305. K. Jahnke and L. Wisotzki acknowledge a DFG travel grant under Wi 1369/12-1. L. C. Popovic acknowledges support by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the program for foreign scholars and the Ministry of Science, Technologies and Development of Serbia through the project "Astrophysical Spectroscopy of Extragalactic Objects". We thank Palle Møller for his comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.